Big Island - Part 5 wrap-up

We're back home now safe and sound.

I asked YB what his favorite part about our vacation was. Take a guess what his answer was. Go ahead. I'll give you a moment.

Was it swimming with dolphins? Nope. Was it playing in the pool and going down the waterslide? Nope. Was it seeing the volcano? Nope. His answer: "Drinking POG on the airplane."

Another funny story from the plane ride. I was trying to teach ES about the way the plane operated and what was happening when things changed. When the noise happened that I knew was the landing gear going down, I asked ES what that noise was. He responded with an open-mouth gasp and yelled, "WE'RE ALL GONNA DIEEEEEE!" LW and I both quickly shushed him, put on a sheepish grin and assured everyone around us, no, no, no, everything's fine, there's nothing to see here, move along please.

Let's see... where did I leave off last time? Oh yeah, at the end of the snorkeling trip.

We made it back to the hotel with enough time to do a lot of this...


And some more of this...


And otherwise enjoying the beauty of the swimming pool at the hotel...


...Albeit under a gray sky (vog). All the while, I drove LW nuts whistling, humming, and singing Like the Weather, because it was stuck in my head for the rest of our vacation.

I forgot to mention earlier, this is the first time I've been in a "saline pool." It was actually really nice. Instead of that really nasty smelling chlorine in the water, this water was like a very mild salt-water. Whenever I accidentally get regular chlorinated pool water up my nose, it really stings my sinuses and it's really annoying. With this saline pool, an accidental splash of water up the nose was no biggy. It didn't sting or annoy - just drained like a gentle saline solution.

Monday night we didn't want to go far for dinner because we were tired of being in the car. We walked across the street from the hotel and ended up going to the Merriman's Market Cafe. It had mixed reviews for poor service but good food, so I was a little wary of going there for dinner, but I was very pleasantly surprised. The service was good and the food was fabulous. I planned on just having a salad and some smaller tapas dishes until the waitress told us the specials, and I couldn't resist the seared ahi with pine nut foccacia crust. I know I previously raved about how the seared ahi at Duke's was the best I had ever had, well this tied for first place with Duke's. It was THAT good.

Walking back to our hotel after dinner was one of those moments I really enjoy being a dad. ES was humming the national anthem, so I asked him if he knew the words to the song or what the song was about. He said no. So I walked him through the words and explained what the song was about, and he thought that was pretty darn cool that it was a song about a battle. We talked about the War of 1812 for a bit, then he asked me what the Civil War was and we talked about that for a bit, too.

Tuesday morning, after having gray skies the entire time we were there, we woke up to find the weather like this:

Beautiful, sunny, blue sky on our last morning.

We went to the pool for a couple of hours before we had to get cleaned up and check out of the hotel.

Not long after arriving at the pool, YB declared he needed to use the restroom, so off we went to the LBR by the pool. I had another one of those occasions where I wish I had a video camera in my hand. Imagine if you will... YB standing at the little-boy sized urinal, goggles up on his forehead, swim trunks down around his ankles, doing a little dance wiggling his bare bum back and forth while humming the Indiana Jones theme song. There was an echo in the bathroom, too, so he kept humming louder and louder until the echo achieved a sort of resonance. I thought it was pretty funny, but maybe you just had to be there.

On our way driving out, I was thinking we should have collected some white coral rocks to write some graffiti of our own on our way out of town. The Waikoloa resort area is surrounded by miles upon miles of barren volcanic wasteland. For several miles driving down the road, you'll see the brown lava rocks are covered with things that people have made out of white rocks - names or sayings or drawings. It's like a locally tolerated version of graffiti.

Waikoloa Graffiti

After we turned in the rental car and got checked in at the airport, we visited the Onizuka Space Museum right there at the Kona airport. It's pretty small, but there were a lot of hands-on activities for the kids to do, and they seemed to enjoy it.

ES and I build the solar system.

The Kona airport is a little bit more rural looking than the Hilo airport.

This was our departure "gate." Gate indeed!

Comparison of our vacation in Maui versus the Big Island.

If you are now or are ever in the future stationed in Pearl Harbor, then I highly recommend taking advantage of the opportunity to hop over to one or more of the other islands for a visit. I'm really glad we have had the opportunity to visit Maui and the Big Island. I doubt we would ever have the resources to go visit those places on a family vacation from the mainland.

So which was better? If I had the opportunity to take another vacation to another island, I would still like to go see Kauai. However, if I had to choose between going back to Maui or going back to the Big Island, I would go back to Maui. Don't get me wrong. I'm glad we went to the Big Island and got to see the volcano and all. As for a resort-type of vacation destination though, I think Maui was better than the Big Island.

Keep in mind, we're partial to Marriott. We've been staying at Marriott properties for many years and using the Marriott Rewards points for free stays here and there. I realize there are many other hotels to choose from, so my impressions of our vacations could be biased by where we stayed.

That being said, here's a quick comparison of Waimea (Maui) versus Waikoloa (Big Island):

Outside Restaurants and Shopping:
Waimea (Maui): Surrounded by a lot more stores and restaurants to choose from.
Waikoloa (Big Island): Surrounded by miles upon miles of barren volcanic wasteland. There are like 5 restaurants to choose from in Waikoloa itself, and you'll need a home equity loan to pay for dinner at any of them. If you don't want to eat at any of those restaurants in Waikoloa, then you have to drive 20 minutes to the north to go to Cafe Pesto, or you need to drive about an hour to the south to Kona. I suppose if we had stayed somewhere down in Kona then we might not have felt so isolated, but I had no idea going into it how isolated Waikoloa is.

Hotel Restaurant:
Waimea (Maui): Costs an arm and a leg, but has a long menu with lots of choices. Plus, they give you chips and salsa with this edamame puree stuff that was AWESOME.
Waikoloa (Big Island): Still costs an arm and a leg, but the menu is really short and didn't give you much to choose from.

Got Cats?:
Waimea (Maui): No feral cats to bother you.
Waikoloa (Big Island): A feral cat wandered through the hotel restaurant while we ate our dinner. It turns out there was a feeding station on a nearby walking path with a sign explaining that volunteers fed and cared for the cats there.

Recreation (this is pretty hotel specific):
Waimea (Maui): The Waimea Marriott had that really cool water park with two water slides (that was FREE). The downside was the lack of beach access, but who needs a beach when you've got that free water park?
Waikoloa (Big Island): The Waikoloa Marriott saline pool was really nice, but there was only one water slide and it was really short. While they did have beach access, they charged you a chunk-o-change extra to use any of their gear (kayaks, waterbikes, snorkel gear, etc).

Air Quality:
Waimea (Maui): Breezy, nice, fresh air.
Waikoloa (Big Island): Got vog? Got a husband whistling an annoying song about the sky being coal gray for the duration of your vacation?

Bang for the Buck:
Waimea (Maui): The Waimea Marriott was cheaper per night, but we had to pay like $10 per extra per day for internet access.
Waikoloa (Big Island): The Waikoloa Marriott was more expensive per night. Thumbs-up for including "free" internet access in the resort fee, but the Waimea Marriott was still cheaper if you added the $10 per day for the internet access to our room cost though. The cats and vog were free, too.

Things we missed on vacation...

Things we missed while we were on vacation... (in no particular order of importance).

- KLOVE. Riding in the car yesterday, it was so refreshing to have KLOVE on the radio again. One of the first songs I heard in the car on the way to go scuba diving was Mercy Me "Here with Me." KLOVE was on a roll yesterday and just kept playing one song after another that made me want to turn the volume up on my radio.

- Spicy toothpaste. Normally, at home, YB uses a training toothpaste and ES uses regular toothpaste. While we were on vacation, we just used ES's tube of regular toothpaste. YB called it the "spicy toothpaste" and took a big slurp of water after each brush past his teeth. Wednesday night getting the boys ready for bed, YB was SO excited to have HIS toothpaste back and not use the "spicy toothpaste" anymore.

- Traffic on H-1 and Kam Highway. Oh wait... no, I didn't miss that. In fact, I totally forgot about it and didn't take it into consideration at all when buying our plane tickets home. In other words, I didn't think about the fact that if our plane landed at 4:30, then it was going to take us like an hour to drive home in the rush hour traffic.

- The Neighborhood Kids. Man... when we drove down our street, it was like a ghost town. I half expected to see a tumble-weed go barreling across our driveway as we pulled up to our house. Human reflexes could not push the buttons on a stopwatch fast enough to measure the time in between me putting the car in park and the doors flying open and the boys' feet hitting the ground. They ran across the street and started ringing the doorbells. It was as if there had been some sort of large-scale game of hide-n-go-seek, and they just announced "olly-olly-oxen-free" on a bull-horn. The kids came out of the woodwork. Within moments our front yards were total chaos with screaming playing children running in and out of our house and the house across the street.

Aside: I've reached a new phase in life. I have un-learned the conditioned response of going to the door when the doorbell rings. I was telling LW the other day that I think it would be interesting to hook up a monitoring device that would measure how often and how many times per day our doorbell rings. I doubt it's anything less than a dozen times a day, and it's never for me or LW. LW chastises me for not even getting out of my chair when the doorbell rings. I just figure why bother? We live in Navy housing with a gate guard controlling access (well... as long as you smile and wave and look like you belong , you're good to go, right?). On those rare occasions it's not for the boys, then they tell us. Then I'll get off my butt and go to the door.

Anyway, returning to my original line of thought...

- DVR. If we ever go on a trip longer than a few days, we definitely need to bring DVD's of the boys' favorite shows off the DVR. They're so used to just picking up the remote control and turning on their favorite shows whenever they want. Every time we walked into our hotel room on vacation, they would turn the TV on and say, "I want to watch ________" and we would have to explain to them that ________ wasn't ON at that particular day and time. They just didn't get that. "Why noooooot? Just use the remote!"

- Now LW and I are catching up on our favorite shows that recorded while we were gone. LW was just watching Dancing with the Stars and I had a total flashback...

Teleportation Song: Kylie Minogue "Can't Get You Out of My Head." Suddenly, I'm back on deployment in Westpac, in a dance club in Brisbane, Australia. Most of the wardroom and chiefs' quarters are there and wearing our summer whites because we were invited out to this welcome to Australia social function. Some gorgeous blond Australian girl got the Eng and I to make fools of ourselves dancing up on one of those raised platforms in the middle of the dance floor. (We were just a novelty to draw attention to her - her boyfriend stayed close by watching us like hawks). I think the rest of the town heard all the U.S. Navy guys were going to THIS dance club and decided to join us. It was PACKED. I don't think any of us could have bought a drink that night. It was like we were celebrities!

- Crocs. Another one bites the dust... We were in one of the souvenir shops in Maui and saw these cute little decorative pins that are designed to poke into the holes of Crocs. The boys thought they were really cool and wanted to get some. Keep in mind at this point only YB had Crocs. So after we got back home, LW now had to take ES to get his very own pair of Crocs so that he could attach his new decorative pins to them. Take a wild guess what color Crocs ES picked out. Those of you who know him know that his favorite colors are yellow and orange.

Here he is in his new outfit (he wasn't cooperating with my requests for him to get dressed until I asked if he wanted to wear his new shirt from Maui).

ES in his new Maui T-shirt and Crocs.

This is the gecko pin ES chose for his Crocs.
(He picked out a yellow gecko of course...)

p.s. I went back and added a few photos to my last post from one of the other guys that went scuba diving with us yesterday.

Maui - part 4 - wrap up with a trip to Lahaina

This is Part 4 of 4 about our trip to Maui. Click on the links here to visit Part 1, Part 2 (Iao Needle & drive around the island), and Part 3 (Snorkeling Trip). Also, for a comparison of Maui versus the Big Island, see this post.

Today was our last day in Maui. We got up and checked out of the hotel this morning. We said goodbye to the wonderful "tree tunnel" as we left the driveway of our hotel for the last time and hit the road for Lahaina on the western end of the island. It was a pretty and scenic drive that took us by the spot where we went snorkeling on the Four Winds II yesterday.

Downtown Lahaina was nice. This is a shot of Front Street in downtown Lahaina. The Maui Revealed book said if you came to this side of the island and DIDN'T go for a walk down Front Street, then you were missing out. I found it to be a typical upscale coastal tourist trap sort of like Cannery Row in Monterey, California, or Mystic, Connecticut or Newport, Rhode Island, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. There were lots of art galleries, restaurants, historic sites, and of course the touristy t-shirt shops.

On the site of this lighthouse, King Kamehameha III ordered the first lighthouse (well... a pole with a light on it) erected in 1840 - the first navigation aid in Hawaii. The current lighthouse that is there was built in 1915. (Yes, this was a virtual geocache).

Believe it or not, all the leaves you see in this picture is ONE banyan tree. It's over 100 years old!

This was absolutely THE COOLEST shop we saw in Lahaina. They had all these really cool ship models made out of wood. I was surprised they only cost on the order of $300 bucks! If I were playing The Price Is Right, I would have guessed upwards of $1,000. They had lots of historic ships like HMS Victory and USS Constitution. They even had the Mount Washington (the ferry boat that runs across Lake Winnepesaukee, NH). Anyway, LW had to drag me and the boys out of there.

Oh, yeah, did I mention they had the stereo-typical tourist t-shirt shops? Some people wonder why I have a problem with our kids glamorizing pirates.

Aside for anyone else shopping for t-shirts in Maui: We shopped several places all over the island for our souvenir t-shirts. Out of all the places we went, the place I liked the best was the shop in Kihei downstairs from Denny's. They had the best selection of t-shirts that I saw in any of the stores we went to, and the prices weren't bad. By "best selection," I mean that they had a variety of nice, classy looking, conservative Maui t-shirts, unlike the stereotypical tourist-trap obnoxious-slogan, cheap, or cheesy t-shirts.

Okay, so now for the best part (in my opinion) about Lahaina. I wrote previously about LW's propensity to look for things that had cross-referenced good reviews in multiple books. Both the Maui Revealed book and the Frommers Hawaii with Kids book contained high praises for Cilantro.

Looks can be deceiving. It may not look like much from the outside, but...

[Cue sound effect: Angels singing the hallelujah chorus] This place was AWESOME. They take "fresh" to a new level and put one of our old NoVA favorites, Baja Fresh, to shame. The food was both SO fresh and absolutely-to-die-for-delicious. I don't think I've ever had tortilla chips that tasted THAT good. The guacamole was ALMOST as good as LW's fresh guacamole. The pork adobo burrito I had was legendary. The churros were even better than Costco's! If you like Mexican food and you go to Maui, then you absolutely MUST go to Cilantro. This place ROCKS!

Of course, if you've been reading my blog for any length of time, you know that seeing this sign made my day!

After our awesome lunch, we hit the road toward back toward the airport and stopped to look for a couple of geocaches along the way. The boys entertained themselves with the camera in the backseat. Now we have hundreds of pictures of YB taken by ES and ES taken by YB, plus pictures of their stuffed-animals. Thank goodness electrons are free (in the 2GB SD card variety in the digital camera I mean).

Those darn paparazzi found this celebrity dude again.

Luckily for us, Maui is mostly a rural type of place and Kahului is not a big town. The power was out, so all the traffic lights were out. It was chaos on the roads. Plus, we couldn't buy gas for the rental car, so we just sucked up the penalty at the rental car place and turned the car in with a half-full tank.

Follow-Up: Now, sitting in my recliner watching the evening news, I see it's a big story that they lost power on almost all of Maui today. The other big news around here is the impact of Aloha Airlines going under and all the people stranded at the airport. The news crew interviewed one couple that's been stranded here for 3 days. Yikes! That's why I just sucked it up and bought new tickets for a Hawaiian Airlines flight back - I didn't want to take any chances with the "space available" travel with so many people holding useless Aloha Airlines tickets and trying to get into those limited available spaces.

Overall, we had a great trip and really enjoyed having the family vacation time and the opportunity to see another one of the islands.

Follow-Up 4/12/08: I had a hit from someone doing a Google search for BlackbBerry signal coverage on Maui. In all the places we went on Maui, I always had a good signal on my BlackBerry. Even when I was over the side of a cliff searching for a geocache, and all I could see was the ocean on one side and sheer rocks above me on the other side, I was still able to access the internet on my BlackBerry to review the geocache listings.

Maui - part 3 - snorkeling trip

This is Part 3 of 4 about our trip to Maui. Click on the links here to visit Part 1, Part 2 (Iao Needle & drive around the island), and Part 4 (Trip to Lahaina). Also, for a comparison of Maui versus the Big Island, see this post.

We got up at the crack of dawn this morning, put the boys in their bathing suits, grabbed our snorkel gear, towels, and sun screen, and got in the car to drive 30 minutes to the marina for our snorkel trip. A few friends of ours recommended taking a snorkeling trip to Molokini. In the Maui Revealed book, we read good things about the Four Winds II charter out of Maalaea.

When I checked out their website, I noted their afternoon snorkel trip was considerably cheaper than the morning trip. When I called, I tried signing up for the afternoon trip, and the lady on the phone explained to me the difference. The Trade Winds generally pick up here early in the afternoon. She said if we went on the afternoon trip, we had about a 50/50 chance of making it to Molokini because conditions are frequently too rough. If we went on the morning trip though, she said we had about a 98% chance of making it to Molokini because it's generally calm in the morning. So I signed us up for the morning trip.

It was very windy when we boarded the boat at 7:15, but the guide book said Maalaea was the windiest spot on the island, and the Captain didn't seem concerned. We got underway and headed out toward the Molokini Crater. About half way there, the Captain noticed all the other charter boats were LEAVING Molokini and heading back toward Maui. He got on the radio with them and found out the winds were bad and the conditions too rough. Big bummer :-(.

Since it was too rough for Molokini, we went and anchored in the lee of the western end of Maui and still had a great time.

This is where we ended up anchoring.
(View looking east toward Maalaea)

Customary Blunoz Self Portrait.

YB initially went in the water with me like this. He wore his swimming goggles and enjoyed sticking his face in the water periodically to see the fish. Eventually he opted for one of the really cool plastic things that kids could ride on and look down through the window to see the fish. ES snorkeled for a little while and then decided to join YB on a white board, too. (You'll see pictures of these in a minute).

There is a professional photographer on board who goes in the water in scuba gear and takes pictures of everyone. On the way back to the harbor, he sells the pictures on CD for you to take home.

This is the picture he took of ES and LW.

This is the picture he took of YB and me. This is that white board with the window I mentioned earlier.

ES really impressed me with how calmly he handled that hungry shark that tried to devour him. Oh, wait, that was just one of the goofy things the professional photographer did with his toy shark.

We did see a LOT of tropical fish (too many to name them all). I figure you can look up pictures of tropical fish on the internet and don't need them here. They'll be on shutterfly later.

Here's LW, ES, and YB watching the fish, while Daddy swims ahead pulling the boys along.

Periodically I would dive down to check something out and pull the boys along to watch me.

LW took this photo of me looking back up to her and the boys.

I took this photo looking back up at the boys.

There was a cool glass-bottom section of the hull where the kids could sit and watch the snorkelers and fish. ES went back up on the boat first because he wanted to watch YB and me out in the water.

Later, when we went back on board for lunch, I took this photo of the boys watching the fish.

Daddy keeping YB warm on the boat while everyone else is looking for whale spouts.

On our way out and on our way back, we saw several whales and a couple of sea turtles. That was pretty cool to see.

ES took this picture of LW, YB, and me during the ride back to the harbor.

In spite of our disappointment over not going to Molokini, I give Four Winds II two thumbs-up. Captain John and his crew were all very professional and friendly. Captain John was really funny and provided a nearly-continuous commentary on the PA system that kept us laughing most of the trip. The food was decent and plentiful. The boat and the trip were all very kid-friendly.


The boat got back to Maalaea about 12:30. We took a drive through the business area in Kihei, stopped to get some Lappert's ice cream and look at some souvenir t-shirts. When we got back to the hotel it was still early enough that we were able to spend a substantial portion of the afternoon at the pool. I didn't bother taking any pictures since it was just more of the same, but we had a blast playing in the kids' pool and rode the water slide what seemed like a hundred times. YB got so used to the water slide that he stopped waiting for LW or me to go with him. He just started heading up the steps and coming down on the water slide on his own.

For our last dinner in Maui, we decided to splurge on the hotel restaurant again and enjoyed a delicious meal with fantastic service and another spectacular sunset.

Tomorrow we hope to do a little bit more exploring around the island before we fly home.

Maui - part 2

This is Part 2 of 4 about our trip to Maui. Click on the links here to visit Part 1, Part 3 (Snorkeling Trip) and Part 4 (Trip to Lahaina).

This morning, we enjoyed our very convenient and affordable breakfast in our hotel room (cereal and milk we bought at the store yesterday) and then headed to the pool.

First steps - getting used to the water.

YB the Water Monster.

ES Stuck in "Jail"

As I mentioned before, we could have paid for four tickets to Hawaiian Adventures Water Park and almost equaled the price we paid for our hotel room here (not including all the resort fees and taxes they add onto the "price" of your hotel room). Sure, we could have stayed home and just gone to Hawaiian Adventures every day, but then we would have to put up with the drive whereas here we just walk out of our hotel room and into the kids' pool. So I think we're getting a pretty good deal in that regard. This morning we did a lot of this...

and this...

The boys liked what a big splash Daddy makes at the bottom of the water slide.

We spent some time diving for toys in the bigger pool, too.

Aside: Man... whatever happened to my little baby boy??? How'd he get to be 6 years old??? He's swimming like a fish! Look how deep he is in that second picture!

Just like yesterday, we got cleaned up and headed into town for lunch. We went to an Italian placed called Bada Bing. The service was friendly and prompt, although they didn't bring LW what she ordered. The food was good and reasonably priced (which is saying a lot for most of the places around here).

After lunch, we took a scenic drive around the coast, found a couple of geocaches, saw some whales, and stopped at the Hula Cookie shop recommended in the Maui Revealed book. The boys each got an ice cream cone, but I got one of the Hula Cookie Ice Cream sandwiches. You get to choose the type of cookie and the flavor of ice cream. I chose the Hula Delight cookies (Morsels of Mango & Pineapple with Ground Coconut and Macadamia Nuts) with Haupia (coconut) ice cream, and it was FANTASTIC!

Hula Cookie Ice Cream Sandwich

LW taking pictures of whales at a scenic overlook on the west side of Maui. Our hotel is somewhere across the water in the distance in the background.

While LW was taking pictures of the whales, I headed down the cliff for another geocache.

Oh, and YB had another run-in with the paparazzi.

For dinner, we more than made up for the savings we had at breakfast. Note to self: READ THE MENU before you go in. We thought the Longhi's restaurant sounded good. I checked the menu on the website, but based on the prices of their salads being cheaper than the prices of the salads at the hotel restaurant, I made the erroneous conclusion that everything else on the menu would also be cheaper.

We walked into Longhi's in our t-shirts and shorts from having explored the island all afternoon and felt severely underdressed, and I just about needed to sell one of our children to pay for dinner. Yikes. The service was good. The food was okay, but not worth what we paid for it. Thank goodness we ate cereal for breakfast! :-)

Tomorrow, we're off to snorkel at the Molokini Crater.